Tuesday, April 12, 2016

JOURNEY TO PLANET WRITE: Insecurities in a Sentence or How I Became a Writer

by
Eleanor Levine

When
I was twelve years old, there was only one street, or “block,” as we called it,
which separated our town, Lakewood, NJ, from our rival town, Jackson, NJ.

An
insipid hatred existed between the neighborhoods. When you entered a backyard
not part of your terrain, a nasty comment evolved into several fistfights. And
we were all, equally, boys and girls, ready to pounce on one another.

One
day, on May 11, 1975, before a dentist appointment, I witnessed my middle brother—we’ll
call him Q—pummelled by a girl from Jackson. This was unprecedented. How could
this ignoramus, I felt, from this “redneck” part of the planet, dare to touch
my brother?

It
was OK for me to hit him or people in my hood,
but when the insurrectionists were next door, when they punched the well-educated, royal Lakewoodites, this
was completely unacceptable. Thus, I grabbed the girl and punched her until,
within seconds, her Abominable Snow Monster of the North sister, came strolling
through the screen door, grabbed me by the hair, and swung me around. My hair
was a veritable bird’s nest, which is what the dentist described it when the
“twirl” by the “girl” was followed by his teeth cleaning.

How
might this hair-wrenching journey, you ask, account for my evolution as a
writer and the culmination of my recently published poetry book, Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria(Unsolicited
Press, Davis, California)?

Well,
it is symbolic of the numerous humiliations I have suffered from having too
much hubris.

For
the longest time, I did not want to define “hubris.” I wanted to let it go
unknown like some unfettered cloud. I wanted to circumvent any responsibility
for pomposity.

The
teenager who turned my hair into a bird bush, well, she was among the first to
see me, a wild 12-year-old, act as if the world owed me something.

I
still act as if the world owes me something, and then I am left on my own, without
much of the world, and it’s just me and the computer.

I
would like to have more lovers and friends, in theory, but after alienating
much of the planet, it is the screen and Kindle (formerly the typewriter and
paperback)—the only beings that tolerate my superciliousness.

Imagine
if you will, the vision of a 12-year-old New Jersey byatch—moi—getting twirled for all the kids to laugh at, after I assault
a lion’s cub. You do not injure a lion cub and hope to go unscathed to the
dentist.

But
of course, the deluded writer shall forever believe that all things and beings,
including the meandering sushi chef who survived Hiroshima, are worth
assaulting. This is why Kafka said it is better to release the toxins, if you
are a writer, than to let them grow unattended in your garden of apprehension
and despair. His exact quote was, “A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.”

It
has always been poetry that has allowed me to release the anger, hubris,
obnoxiousness, insecurity and “toxins.” I would be a colossal nut, locked away
in a mental institution, if it were not for Mr. Kafka’s advice and the notion
that one must expel the brain waves and mood swings that harass and mortify us.

For
more than 30 years, when I found myself alone, betwixt the world and the pen, I
wrote poetry.

What
you find, when you read Waitress at the
Red Moon Pizzeria, is the culmination of many misadventures in my brain,
much joy and love and even some displeasure at being a Jewish lesbian on the
frontiers of New Jersey, New York, and Virginia.

My
poem, “Insecurities in a Sentence,” shows the distempered release of angst and
apprehension:

I
like my insecurities

they
float around me

like
goldfish crooning

or
poets snapping like piranhas

in
a Dewey Decimal System of juxtaposition

metaphors
strung out on anxieties

The
contaminants are caught and their terrain is the English language:

insecurity
in a sentence

without
a spinal tap of reality,

or
a scissor tap dancing toward metaphors

the
flux and influx in a flood in a bathtub

like
a string in a tampon

or
the boy on the platform with the muted sensibility

the
playwright disdaining his ideas

or
a cockroach taking ambidextrous steps toward his food

Allen
Ginsberg snapping photos from his verses

Walt
Whitman dancing naked on a tree stump

a
stroke of light fanning its way to me at an opera

Words
are energized with our thoughts and feelings as in the poem, “Waitress at the Red
Moon Pizzeria,” which is also the book’s title:

My green texts were
longer than your grays

You felt smothered like
a senior citizen in a hand-knitted Terracotta afghan

Insanity,
like hair, is not meant to be a bird’s nest, and is best transformed into
poetry, if you happen to write that. It keeps us saner than if we were receiving
a lashing from Jackson, NJ’s Abominable Snow Monster of the North or our own
mind.

I
hope you’ll read my new poetry book, Waitress
at the Red Moon Pizzeria, which is available at Unsolicited Press or Amazon.

Rattle of Want

Pomegranate Stories

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FEAR

Fear freezes creativity. Failure cracks the ice. You can let yourself slip into the cold water or you can grapple for purchase and scream for help until you are once again donning your ice skates and cutting an elegant figure-eight. -Gay Degani

What is Flash Fiction?

Flash fiction is to traditional short stories what lightning is to a storm… Thunder, rain, sleet, wind and lightning are all part of the excitement of a full blown nor’easter or afternoon thunderstorm. The rush of hard rain opens our eyes; its steady drum on the roof soothes us until that first roll of thunder raises our pulse; lightning makes us anticipate and 1-2-3 count. Then rain again and we wait for another loud crack, more electrical fireworks, the clouds to clear, the skies to blue. A good storm is filled with promise, surprise, fear, suspense, relief, joy, and sometimes sadness. So is a good story. -Gay Degani

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
~Shakespeare